“So your suspicions proved to be accurate,” said Jean-Pierre, nodding his head reflectively.
“When the news came over the television that an unidentified old man had shot himself in the theater after screaming that you were his son—well, I knew I’d found Jodelle.”
“But you didn’t, Drew Latham. You found the son, not the father he never knew. So where are you now? There’s little I can add that you don’t already know, and that much I myself just found out tonight from the only parents I’ve ever known. They tell me Jodelle was a Resistance fighter, a baritone at the Paris Opéra, found out by the Germans and sent to a concentration camp from which he supposedly never returned. Obviously he did, and apparently the poor soul recognized his infirmities and never revealed himself.” The actor paused, then added sadly, pensively, “He gave me a privileged life and rejected any worthwhile life for himself.”
“He must have loved you very much, my darling,” said Giselle. “But what sorrow, what torment he had to live with.”
“They looked for him. They tried so hard to find him—he could have been given medical treatment. God, what a tragic waste!” Jean-Pierre looked over at the American. “Again, monsieur, what can I say? I can’t help you any more than I can help myself.”
“Tell me exactly what happened. I learned very little at the theater. The police weren’t there when it happened, and the witnesses who remained—mainly ushers by the time I arrived—weren’t much help. Most claimed they heard the shouts, at first thinking they were part of the ‘bravos,’ then saw an old man in disheveled clothes running down the aisle, yelling that you were his son and carrying a rifle, which he turned on himself and fired. That was about it.”
“No, there was more,” said Villier, shaking his head. “There was a brief hush in the audience, a momentary pause, that shock of astonishment before the vocal reaction begins. It was then that I clearly heard several of his statements. ‘I have failed you and your mother—I am useless, a nothing. I only want you to know I tried—I tried but failed.’ That’s all I recall, then there was chaos. I have no idea what he meant.”
“It has to be in the words, Mr. Villier,” said Latham rapidly, emphatically, “and it had to be something so vital to him, so catastrophic that he broke the silence of a lifetime and confronted you. A last gesture before killing himself; something had to trigger it.”
“Or the final deterioration of an unbalanced mind pushed over the edge into utter madness,” suggested the actor’s wife.
“I don’t think so,” the American courteously disagreed. “He was too focused. He knew exactly what he was doing—what he was going to do. He somehow got into the theater with a concealed rifle, no mean feat, and then waited until the performance was over and your husband was accepting the praises of the crowd—he wasn’t going to deny him that. A man gripped in the emotional frenzy of an insane act would be prone to interrupting the play, pivoting the entire attention on himself. Jodelle didn’t. A part of him was too rational, too rationally generous to permit it.”
“Are you also a psychologist?” asked Bressard.
“No more than you are, Henri. The bottom line for both of us is studying behavior, predicting it if we can, isn’t that so?”
“So you’re saying,” interrupted Villier, “that my father—the natural father I never knew—rationally calculated the moves for his own death because he was motivated by something that happened to him.” The actor leaned back in his chair, frowning. “Then we must find out what it was, mustn’t we?”
“I don’t know how, sir. He’s dead.”
“If an actor is analyzing a character he must bring to life on the stage or in a film, and that character is beyond the clichés of his imagination, he has to study the reality, expand upon it, doesn’t he?”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Many years ago I was called upon to play a murderous Bedouin sheikh, a very unsympathetic man who ruthlessly kills his enemies because he believes they are the enemies of Allah. It brought to mind all the clichés one expects: the satanic brows; the sharp chin beard; the thin, evil lips; the messianic eyes—it was all so banal, I thought. So I flew to Jidda, went into the desert—under luxurious conditions, I assure you—and met with several Bedouin chieftains. They were nothing of the sort. They were religious zealots, indeed, but they were calm, very courteous, and truly believed that what the West called the Arab crimes of their grandfathers were entirely justified, for those ancient enemies were the enemies of their God. They even explained that after each death, their ancestors would pray to Allah for the safe deliverance of their enemies. There was a true sadness in what they felt was necessary slaughter. Do you see what I mean?”
“That was Le Carnage du Voile,” said the Quai d’Orsay’s Bressard. “You were superb and stole the film from its two stars. Paris’s leading critic wrote that your evil was so pure because you clothed it in such quiet benevolence—”
“Please, Henri. Enough.”
“I still don’t know what you’re driving at, Mr. Villier.”
“If what you believe about Jodelle … if what you believe is true, then a part of him was less mad than his actions would indicate. Isn’t that really what you are saying?”
“Yes, it is. I believe it. That’s why I’ve been trying to find him.”
“And such a man, regardless of his infirmities, is capable of communicating with others, with his equally unfortunate peers, not so?”
“Probably. Sure.”
“Then we must start with his reality, the environs in which he lived. We’ll do it, I’ll do it.”
“Jean-Pierre!” cried Giselle. “What are you saying?”
“Our revival has no matinees. Only an idiot would play Coriolanus eight times a week. My days are free.”
“And?” asked a disturbed Bressard, his eyebrows arched.
“As you have so generously implied, Henri, I am a passably adequate actor and I have access to every costume establishment in Paris. The attire will be no problem, and extremist makeup has always been one of my strengths. Before he passed away, Monsieur Olivier and I agreed that it was a dishonest artifice—the chameleon, he called it—but nevertheless more than half the battle. I will enter the world where Jodelle existed and perhaps I’ll get lucky. He had to talk to someone, I’m convinced of that.”
“Those environs,” said Latham, “that ‘world’ of his is pretty sordid and can be violent, Mr. Villier. If some of those characters think you have twenty francs, they’ll break your legs for it. I carry a weapon, and without exaggeration, I felt I had to display it on five separate occasions during the past weeks. Also, most of those people are tight-lipped and don’t like outsiders who ask questions; in fact, they resent it strongly. I didn’t get anywhere.”
“Ah, but you are not an actor, monsieur, and in all frankness, your French could be improved upon. No doubt you prowled those streets in your normal clothes, your overall appearance not much different from what we see now, n’est-ce pas?”
“Well … yes.”
“Again, forgive me, but a clean-shaven man in rather decent attire and asking a question in hesitant French would hardly inspire confidence among Jodelle’s confreres in that world of his.”
“Jean-Pierre, stop it!” exclaimed the actor’s wife. “What you’re suggesting is out of the question! My feelings and your safety aside, your run-of-the-play contract forbids you to undertake physical risk. My God, you’re not permitted to ski or play polo or even fly your plane!”
“But I won’t be skiing or on a horse or flying my plane. I’m merely going across the city into various arrondissements to research atmosphere. It’s far less than traveling to Saudi Arabia for a secondary film role.”
“Merde!” cried Bressard. “It’s preposterous!”
“I didn’t come here to ask such a thing of you, sir,” said Latham. “I came hoping you might know something that could help me. You don’t and I accept that. My government can hire people to do wha
t you’re suggesting.”
“Then without false modesty I suggest that you wouldn’t be getting the best. You do want the best, don’t you, Drew Latham, or have you forgotten your brother so quickly? Your anxiety tells me you haven’t. He must be a fine man, a splendid older brother who undoubtedly helped you, guided you. Naturally you feel you owe him whatever you can do.”
“I’m concerned, yes, but that’s personal,” interrupted the American sharply. “I’m a professional.”
“So am I, monsieur. And I owe the man we call Jodelle every bit as much as you owe your brother. Perhaps more. He lost his wife and his first child fighting for all of us, then tragically consigned his own existence to a hell we can’t imagine so that I might thrive. Oh, yes, I owe him—professionally and personally. Also the woman, the young actress who was my natural mother, and the child whose first name I bear, the older brother who might have guided me. My debt is heavy, Drew Latham, and you will not stop me from paying something back. None of you will.… Be so kind as to come here tomorrow at noon. I’ll be prepared and all the arrangements will be made.”
Latham and Henri Bressard walked out of the imposing Villier house on the Pare Monceau to the official’s car. “Need I tell you that I don’t like any of this?” said the Frenchman.
“Neither do I,” agreed Drew. “He may be a hell of an actor, but he’s out of his depth.”
“Depth? What depth? I simply don’t like his going into the bowels of Paris where, if he’s recognized, he could be assaulted for his money or even kidnapped for a ransom. You’re saying something else, I believe. What is it?”
“I’m not sure, call it instinct. Something did happen to Jodelle, and it’s a lot more than a deranged old man killing himself in front of the son he never acknowledged. The act itself was one of final desperation; he knew he had been beaten, irrevocably beaten.”
“Yes, I heard Jean-Pierre’s words,” said Bressard, rounding the trunk to the driver’s side as Latham opened the door at the curb. “The old man shouted that he had failed; he had tried but failed.”
“But what had he tried? What did he fail to do? What was it?”
“The end of his road, perhaps,” replied Henri, starting the car and heading into the street. “The knowledge that at long last the enemy was beyond his reach.”
“To know that, to really know it, he had to have found that enemy, and then understood that he was helpless. He knew he was considered a madman; neither Paris nor Washington thought he was credible, and he’d been rejected, hell, thrown out of the courts. So he went out on his own to find his enemy, and once he found it … him … they, something happened. They stopped him cold.”
“If that was the case, instead of merely stopping him, why didn’t they kill him?”
“They couldn’t. Because if they did, it would raise too many questions. Kept alive until he died, and at his age and in his condition, that wasn’t far off, he was just another delusional drunk. But if he was murdered, his crazy accusations might appear more credible. People like me might begin digging, and his enemy can’t afford that. Alive he was a nothing, killed he’s something else.”
“I fail to see your point as it pertains to Jean-Pierre, my friend.”
“Jodelle’s enemies, the group here in France that I’m convinced is linked to the Nazi movement in Germany, are way down deep, but they’ve got eyes and ears above the ground. If the old man made contact, the least they’ll do is follow up on his suicide. They’ll be on the lookout for anyone asking questions about him. If there’s any truth in what Jodelle claimed, again they can’t afford not to.… And that leads me back to the missing OSI files in Washington. They were stolen for a reason.”
“I see what you mean,” said Bressard, “and now I’m definitely against Villier’s involvement. I’ll do my best to stop him; Giselle will help. She’s as strong as he is, and he adores her.”
“Maybe you weren’t listening a while ago. He said none of us could stop him. He wasn’t acting, Henri, he meant it.”
“I agree, but you’ve brought in another equation. We’ll sleep on it, if any of us can sleep.… Do you still have your flat on the rue du Bac?”
“Yes, but I want to stop at the embassy first. There’s someone in Washington I have to call on a secure line. Our transport will get me home.”
“As you wish.”
Latham took the elevator down to the embassy basement complex and walked through a white, neon-lit corridor to the communications center. He inserted his plastic access card into the security receptacle; there was a brief, sharp buzz, the heavy door opened, and he walked inside. The large air-cooled, dust-filtered room, like the corridor, was pristine white, the panoply of electronic equipment lining three walls, the metal glistening, a swivel chair placed every six feet in front of its own console. Due to the hour, however, only one chair was occupied; traffic was lightest between two and six o’clock in the morning, Paris time.
“I see you’ve got the graveyard, Bobby,” said Drew to the sole occupant across the room. “You holding up?”
“Actually, I like it,” replied Robert Durbane, a fifty-three-year-old communications specialist and senior officer of the embassy’s comm center. “My people think I’m such a good guy when I assign the shift to myself; they’re wrong, but don’t tell them. See what I have to work on?” Durbane held up a folded London Times, the page displaying the infamous Times crossword puzzle and lethal double crostic.
“I’d say that’s adding masochism to double duty,” said Latham, crossing to the chair to the right of the operator. “I can’t do either one, don’t even try.”
“You and the rest of the youngsters. No comment, Mr. Intelligence Man.”
“I suspect there’s gravel in that remark.”
“Wear sandals on the driveway.… What can I do for you?”
“I want to call Sorenson on scrambler.”
“He didn’t reach you about an hour ago?”
“I wasn’t home.”
“You’ll find his message … that’s funny, though, he spoke as if you and he had been talking.”
“We did, but that was nearly three hours ago.”
“Use the red telephone in the cage.” Durbane turned and gestured toward a built-in glass cubicle fronting the fourth wall, the glass rising to the ceiling. The “cage,” as it was called, was a soundproof, secure area where confidential conversations could be held without being overheard. The embassy personnel were grateful for it; what they did not hear could not be extracted from them. “You’ll know when you’re on scrambler,” added the specialist.
“I would hope so,” said Drew, referring to the discordant beeps that preceded a harsh hum over the line, the signal that the scrambler was in operation. He rose from the chair, walked to the thick glass door of the cage, and let himself in. There was a large Formica table in the center with the red telephone, pads, pencils, and an ashtray on top. In the corner of this unique enclosure was a paper shredder whose contents were burned every eight hours, more often if necessary. Latham sat down in the desk chair, positioned so his back was to the personnel operating the consoles; maximum security included the fear of lip-reading, which was laughed at until a Soviet mole was discovered in the embassy’s communications during the height of the Cold War. Drew picked up the phone and waited; eighty-two seconds later the beep-and-hum litany was played, then came the voice of Wesley T. Sorenson, director of Consular Operations.
“Where the devil have you been?” asked Sorenson.
“After you cleared my contacting Henri Bressard with our promise of disclosure, I went to the theater, then called Bressard. He took me to the Villier house on Parc Monceau. I just got here.”
“Then your projections were right?”
“As right as simple arithmetic.”
“Good Lord …! The old man really was Villier’s father?”
“Confirmed by Villier himself, who learned it from—as he put it—the only parents he’d ever known.”
; “Considering the circumstances, what a hell of a shock!”
“That’s what we have to talk about, Wes. The shock produced a mountain of guilt in our famous actor. He’s determined to use his skills and go underground to see if he can make contact with Jodelle’s friends, try to learn if the old man told anyone where he was going during the past few days, who it was he wanted to find, and what he intended to do.”
“Your scenario,” interrupted Sorenson. “Your scenario, if your projections proved accurate.”
“It had to be—if I was right. But that scenario called for using our own assets, not Villier himself.”
“And you were right. Congratulations.”
“I had help, Wes, namely the former ambassador’s wife.”
“But you found her, no one else did.”
“I don’t think anyone else has a brother in a tight, no-answer situation.”
“I understand. So what’s your problem?”
“Villier’s determination. I tried to talk him out of it, but I couldn’t, I can’t, and I don’t think anyone can.”
“Why should you? Perhaps he can learn something. Why interfere?”
“Because whoever triggered Jodelle’s suicide must have faced him down. Somehow they convinced him that he’d lost the whole ball of wax, he was finished. There was nothing left for the old man.”
“Psychologically that makes sense. His obsession had nowhere to go but to destroy him. So?”
“Whoever they are will certainly follow up on his suicide. As I told Bressard, they can’t afford not to. If someone, no matter who it is, shows up asking questions about Jodelle—well, if his enemies are who I think they are, that someone hasn’t got much of a future.”
“Did you tell this to Villier?”
“Not in so many words, but I made it clear that what he wanted to do was extremely dangerous. In essence, he told me to go to hell. He said he owed Jodelle every bit as much, if not more, than I owe Harry. I’m supposed to go to his place tomorrow at noon. He says he’ll be ready.”